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Who in their right mind is going to fork-out hard earned cash for an AM2 mobo, CPU, & DDR2 if there's little to no gain in performance over AMD Socket 939. This review makes depressing reading for AMD fans looking to upgrade, it's obvious that AM2 has little to offer this year, I expect to see many jumping ship when Conroe is released. Reply

Don't count on many people jumping ships. AMD has a pretty good enthusist fanbase (fanboys mostly). I know Im going to drop my FX-55 for the 2.67GHz Conroe but don't expect many to switch sides... besides, most of these fanboys are probably going to cook up some conspiracy theories to degrade Conroe. Reply

I might jump ship to AM2 from my Duron 600MHz processor. For me, a dual channel architecture coupled with cheap Sempron processor and onboard video would make a lot of sense - especially a low power Sempron, if such beasts could be found.
I am waiting for the AM2 platform (processors, chipsets, mainboards) Reply

Calin, by jumping ship I meant switching from AMD to Intel. Let's see what June brings, if this review is anything to go by I don't expect a massive leap in performance from the AM2 platform over current socket 939, People with money in their pockets now aren't interested in what AM2 /DDR2 may develop into in the year 2007. If Conroe lives up to the hype of offering more bang for less bucks ... I'll make the switch, screw brand loyalty. Reply

My god, that website has to be the most biased **** I've ever seen. Explain Victor Wong's resoluts on SuperPI 1M (21secs) with a $300 processor with an unsupported motherboard and BIOS. I've never seen such fanboyism in my life. You can't believe anything from that website. Reply

AM2 may not hold up against Conroe, but until you can buy them in a store, they are vaporware. Intel is late a LOT, so I'm not buying this "don't worry it'll be soon" stuff. Merom prediction: Jan 07. Conroe prediction Oct 06. That's a long, long time for AMD to sell superb chips to a lot of folks.

Everyone is bitching how the Conroe is going to kick AM2 @$$ but the facts of the Conroe are starting to leak out. http://sharikou.blogspot.com/">http://sharikou.blogspot.com/ Does this illegitimate Conroe? No, but it does clarify why Conroe preformed so well in the benchmarked apps. and that Conroe is still more memory constrained then the AM2. The AM2 might just get 4MB of Cache per Core thanks to Z-RAM or at least the K8L server editions sure will. Will the real Conroe to step forward? Reply

I love how that site only compared Conroes worst results, also the Conroe used crappy memory timings, DDR2-533, preproduction boards, ES sample CPU. Oh, and did we forget its a 300$ CPU vs a 1200$ AMD CPU? Ye we might have forgotten than...didn´t we. Reply

"Facts"? That site is merely an ultra-pro-AMD/ultra-anti-Intel blog factory. It might as well be titled, "The Ravings of a Lunatic Fanboy!" I think just about every article ends up ripping on Intel in some fashion. He's actually still proclaiming the near-future death of Intel, I think. "Intel is dead, and the only reason they haven't realized it is because they don't have a brain." I think that was what he stated on one of the "articles".

Isn't this the same Sharky that has been talking about the demise of Intel for years, like since the Athlon days? What will he say when Intel ships 2.66 GHz Conroe chips that easily outperform FX-60 chips in meaningful benchmarks at $300 or so, and then follow it up by having 3.0+ GHz parts? I can already guess what he'll say: Intel is just being weak by including more cache, making more chips, selling more processors, yada yada yada.

Look, Intel isn't great, and AMD isn't the promised Mesiah. Both are mega-corporations looking to make money. End of story. What has AMD really done new in the past three years? They've integrated the memory controller into K7, and they've pushed 64-bits onto us. I still haven't done any 64-bit computing, because for 99% of what I do, it's meaningless. Any benchmark that shows 64-bit computing as substantially faster (like Sharky illustrated on the Conroe article with ScienceMark) has just unveiled itself as a synthetic test that most people will never use. Tasks that can really benefit from 64-bit floats/integers can already be done more efficiently with MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3. The only thing 64-bits really adds is the ability to address more than 4GB of RAM, so until we're all running 4GB of RAM it isn't necessary. Reply

quote:What has AMD really done new in the past three years? They've integrated the memory controller into K7, and they've pushed 64-bits onto us. I still haven't done any 64-bit computing, because for 99% of what I do, it's meaningless.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Zero. x64 is very, very important and valuable. Just because YOU don't see any benefit is meaningless. So I suppose Vista 64 bit edition is meaningless too. And I suppose x64 in the server space is meaningless, even though smart people are demanding it to the point where AMD can not make the Opteron fast enough. 64 bit applications are going to be EVERYTHING, especially in 4,8,16 and more processor/core settings. Unless for starters, you think 4 gigs of RAM is more than enough moving forward. :nuts: Meaningless indeed.

AMD has the interconnect infrastructure that will take them into multi-core, mult processor territory that Intel can only DREAM about. Couple that with x64 and Intel seems lost in the wilderness by comparison. What's next from Intel, a 64 meg shared cache?

Conroe is a short term solution, period. It may put Intel temporarily back in the thick of things. But it does not solve Intel's hopelessly outdated FSB mentality. It does not solve the fact that Intel has no idea how to add x64 to their mobile parts. It does not change the fact that AMD will be further extending x64, forcing Intel to play catch up again. It does not change the fact that Intel's x64 bit hack is actually slower than running in 32 bit mode.

Sorry, but we have all seen this movie before. Go back and read the Intel hype and press releases from the last 3 years. They are nearly a carbon copy of what is happening now. Reply

1) lower power requirements for primarily laptops and servers
2) changing to ddr2 helps the industry not make two different main memory types
3) gives more bandwidth for quad cores across entire product line
4) released before back to school business (time related - gives them enough time to saturate the market with the technology) Reply

Unified socket interface - this way, anyone could use the same mainboard with processors from the lowly Semprons (at some $50) to the ultrahigh FX line ($1000). This helps the small shops in the retail channel, as they won't need to stock so many mainboard types (socket related). Reply

You forgetting one fact regarding AM2 platform. It is going to support four-core CPU.
And using DDR2 AMD will be able to support four memory hungry cores (ups forbidden word).
The product launch and availability of X4/Opterons will be September I think to be faster than Intel for sure.

AMD is playing with us, because need best performance processors to stay on top of Intel offer. Why? The capacity is the answer. It is better to sell 1 CPU for 2000$ than 10 for 170$. Q2/Q3 AM2/939 is enough for first wave of Conroes. Then we will see X4 and other fun stuff like K8L to keep Intel and to extend the FAB3x capacity. Reply

Making 4cores on 90nm is suicide. It would be a massive sized chip, and we would talk of speeds of like 2.0-2.4ghz peak and a massive TDP. I guess a chip like that fastly would cost 2000$+
So don´t expect a 4 core chip from AMD before 65nm, so sometimes in 2007. The chance of having a 4core chip failing under production right now is massive. Also a 4core chip takes waffer space as said, so again, AMD wont ship many CPUs. So unless you want AMD to be a server vendor only..then no. 4 core AMD chips will start in the highend servers i presume, we talk Socket F here.

Intel comes with a 4 core (2 DC bolted) in Q1 2007 as a desktop. Later on they will make a "real" 4core chip. But this is the most wise and profitable way to start with, take 2 working dualcores and get a quadcore. Cheap and easy.

Sure one 2000$ CPu is better than 10 or 20 170$ chips. But they are just killing themselves that way and you wont see them in any desktop anymore then. But maybe thats Hectors plan, all new AMD developments look very serverside.

Even with the FSB interconnect (core to core) in Intel's current Dual Cores, their performance (in real applications) isn't degraded so much. That is, considering their performance in core-to-core data transfers is lower than half of AMD's current dual cores.
If you can make single cores at 80% rate of success (and 20% failures), then dual cores on a single chip would take some 20% + (1-20%)x20%, or 36% bad, and quad cores would take almost 60% failures. Compare this to two bolted dual cores at 36% failures, and as a result, Intel can produce almost twice as many two chips quad cores than single chip quad cores. Is the performance hit significant? We don't know very well (for quad cores). For dual cores, the performance hit is existant but (right now) not so significant (based on scalability from two to four cores servers between Opteron and Xeons). Reply

The test should be a PC2-6400 which is DDR2-800 mhz rated memory. If this test is performed with an average memory maker DDR2 PC2-6400 memory the score will be even less impressive. This is worth mentioning.

Rated at DDR2-1000, this OCZ announces right off the bat that it is serious new memory. Past DDR2 has struggled to reach DDR2-1000, so rating this new OCZ at DDR2-1000 is a "look-at-me" announcement. The rated timings of 4-5-4-15 at DDR2-1000 are also exceptionally fast for DDR2 memory at that speed. By the way, for those of you who have trouble translating PC speed ratings to Memory Speeds, all you have to do is divide by 8. Thus PC2-8000 is DDR2-1000 speed, PC-5400 is DDR2-667 (results are approximate), PC2-6400 is DDR2-800, etc.

I haven't heard anything about changes in regards to the opteron platform, or are they staying the same. I would assume they would change to use the ddr2 memory as well.

I actually can't see how purchasing a new AM2 system is good for anyone, whether a new system or upgrading. With prices being higher, almost double, and parts being barely similar in performance with premium boards, memory, etc., it doesn't seem like a good idea for anyone to hop on early to the AM2 platform. Just seems like a waste of a lot of money. In this case, the latest is not the greatest. Reply

Where are the double prices? The ram is more money but everything else looks to be the same. According to http://tinyurl.com/koapt">this, the prices for the CPU's are the same as current one's. I doubt the motherboards will cost more than the typical new release prices. Reply

What was the date code on the CPU? Why no screenshot showing that the CPU was at least recognized? The BIOS memory settings are meaningless if the CPU is not properly recognized. I would have done a disk benchmark, because the fact that the poorest result was from Business Winstone tells me that something was wrong in that department. Reply

The shots of the chip itself were kept out of the review to protect our source for the chips obviously. A difference of 0.1 points in Business Winstone is within the normal margin of error (< 3%) for that benchmark, the difference itself is basically 0. The CPU was also recognized properly by the BIOS.

It seems to me that socket AM2 is likely to be just a stepping stone. Current AMD processors don't need DDR2 - but the next generation will.

Conroe seems likely to stamp all over AMD for a few months. The point when things will get interesting again is when we see quad-core processors begin to ship from both Intel and AMD.

AMD's architecture has been tuned for multi-processor systems right from the start. Post-Conroe quad-core chips may be a bit clunky - effectively two dual-core chips glued together, in the same kind of way that Pentium D is two single-core chips glued together. AMD may therefore regain the lead in the quad-core arena - if there are no other limiting factors, such as memory bandwidth.

If a dual-core chip is using barely half of the available memory bandwidth of DDR2-800, what that means is that a quad core chip will not be significantly limited by memory bandwidth. I think this is what AMD is planning: they will need DDR2 bandwidth for quad-core, and they want to switch over to it now to get all the bugs ironed out in time for K8L. So socket AM2 has no significance for the current generation of chips, and was never meant to have: it's merely preparation for 2007.

If this is true, then the fact that current chips use only half the available bandwidth may actually be deliberate, and something that won't change.
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It will improve on next revision I bet, I was expecting 0% improve.
This is just a RAM type exchange.

You AMD systems users must show appreciation to AMD for the excellent platform they developed.

With Intel each time there is a memory speed bump, you "have" to upgrade the motherboard because of the memory controller on the chipset, even if Intel decides to keep the same socket. How many times since DDR266 have Intel “forced” people to upgrade motherboard/chipset in order to catch up every time there is a memory speed bump?

Even at the same RAM speed Intel “offers” (example) 865 and 875 chipsets where one is faster than the other with the same RAM?

Since AMD integrates the memory controller, you never get problems like that. AMD integrated memory controller is compatible with DDR 266 to 400 (unofficial 433,466,500).
With DDR2, you will get 533,667,800 (unofficial 933, 1066).
You always keep the same board and RAM. The processor is the only that changes.
If AMD didn’t get socket 754, and only 940 or 939 we where looking at the perfect computer platform. Reply

RDRAM was a very bad choice for the processors to which was first mated. Pentium !!!, like the Athlons of today, fare better on low latency lower bandwidth memory than on high latency high bandwidth memory (as RDRAM was). However, RDRAM has its place in small devices - where you can not fit all of the 168 pins of SDR memory, or all of the 180+ of the DDR memory.
Pentium 4 was doing very well on RDRAM, dual RDRAM was quite a bit faster than dual SDR or single DDR. There was a time when intel 850 with dual RDRAM was the high mark in the chipsets Reply

This seems to be just a quicky review. In the conclusion it is mentioned that the usefullness of memory bandwith increases as the CPU clock speed increases. But still a lower speed was used for this test than for the DDR1-400 versus DDR1-500 evaluation. It seems to me at least this test should either have been done at different speeds to get a feel of this impact or at minimum at the same speed of the DDR1-400 versus DDR1-500 article.
As a sidenote, it's also interesting to see that the test config has no mention of the CPU speed that was used. If this is NDA, then say so, if not it just appears as hiding the details that would expose this article as gossip instead of information.
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I meant...
Intel will see how the next generation of AMD works just 5% faster....wouldn't they tune down conroe to match or make it just a bit faster than AMD and sell at the premium price? Since the demand will be almost the same.
1) AMD fanboi will keep on buying AMD
2) Intel fanboy will keep on buying Intel
3) But this time, people that wants performance, will be buying Intel (even though its only a 10% faster than the competitor, or 40$)

This way, when AMD makes a new gen of procesor, Intel only have to tune up Conroe which is cheaper than making another big modification that might or might not work. Reply

I’ve got to disagree- I don’t think this makes sense to even upgrade from a 754 system to AM2.

Why? Because if you remember Nforce 2- and all the Mb’s with “future- proof” DDR-400 systems, the MB makers did not live up to their claims. For most recognized mfg’s it took the revision after DDR-400 memory was available before most of them got it right.

So I don’t see where AM2 can even be thought of as an upgrade path, especially before final revisions have been made in silicon. A MB you buy initially might work, but with future memory or processors… forget it. Anybody wanna take a bet ($1 will get you $10), that the first MB’s out by lets say- ASUS, do not allow for different memory timings or the latest memory say March of 07?, let alone a top of the line processor, same date?

While the author did say many changes are still in the works, final silicon may not yet even been achieved. How can buying a MB now be considered a possible upgrade in the future?

For this reason, and many price/performance reasons, I have a 754 system, and I will hope that after tax season ends I can build a 939 for a better price. That’s it.

The numbers per the review state this clearly. This is not about performance. And it will be expensive. The analysis on the forum here site seems to indicate that the relative analysis is expected future performance, when Anand admittedly and AMD (by not making announcements about performance) seem to indicate (and I explicitly do) that this is not about performance…. Yet either. So how can this even be recommended as an upgrade path when there is very little real world benefit and future compatibility a MB purchased now and memory or processors is not even known.

I am an avid fan of AMD, but I think excess hype can kill a product as quickly as bad rumors.
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I'm suprised that nobody has considered the bottlenecks in AMD's systems as of late. Recently, it seems that all AMD really needs to do with the K8 is keep squeezing more MHz out of it. Clearly the CPU has enough memory bandwidth to spare, so bring the rest of the processor up to speed. IIRC, AMD is starting to implement an improved version of SOI in their new CPU cores (or is it 65nm cores?), which will help increase clock-speed headroom. Also, as quality continues to improve, AMD might be able to add higher clock speeds to take advantage.

Double-pumping the ALU is only going to limit scaling and increase heat... what the K8 core really needs is better L1 and L2 cache subsystem.... The L1 is sort of ok but getting old it the same one the K7 (7 year old). They improved the L2 of the K8 over K7 but half heartedly. It still has too narrow of a path and too high of a latency. I can just imagine what the K8 can do with a 4M low latency cache that has 256 or 512 bit width data path (+ ECC of course).
While they are there lower the L1 latency to 2 cycles. That alone is 5-10 % improvement.
And they need to seriously improve the SIMD execution units. The current AMD SIMD units are almost as lame as the Intel implementation of AMDs 64bit instructions.
Oh yeaa and write some decent compilers to make use of the 64 bit goodness like extra register - where are the promised 20 % improvements?
The K8 core can scale better than Conroe and can crunch trough more instructions/data if the cache subsystem can feed all these to the execution units. Albeit the K8 has to be clocked slightly higher to do that - such is the tradeoff of 3 vs. 4 IPC. Reply

1) 3-cycle L1 on K7/K8 is the fastest required, it goes from the internal structure if the scheduler and the pipeline that 2-cycle chache would do almost no good. Also they would have to reduce L1 size to 32k+32k which would hurt. It simply does not make sense to change L1 at all, maybe on K8L but IMHO 128k+128k would help much more than 2-cycle latency.

2) 17-cycle L2 is PRETTY GOOD for 1M L2 with exclusive structure!!! IMHO it is possible to do 16-cycle, maybe 15, but nowhere near Dothan's 10-cycle. Also remember lower-latency L2 has scaling problems (that's why intel made prescott's L2 slower than NW's)

3) Concerning the memory subsystem(caches + memory) (on single-socket K8/K8L) the biggest issue is the robustness(amount of on the fly acceses to memory) and latency of the memory controller. To solve this is not trivial thing. IMHO to add 2-4M L3 with random access ~50 cycles would do.

4) In the >4 sockets front all they need is effective caching of MOESI snoops.

You are also forgot K7/K8 is mostly KISS architecture. It is just wery well balanced so has good performance in the end. However do one wrong change and you are screwed.
KISS == Keep It Simple Silly

About conroe, ita has twice as wide ALU's and FPU's than PIII/K7/K8, this means it has huge resources at disposal to calculate SIMD.
Same goes for K8L 2 quarters later. That said K7/K8 core has far more FP power than P6 architecture. On FP Conroe and K8 are about aquall.
but K8L will wipe the floor with K8 and Conroe on FP. Conroe will wipe K8 on INT and be still faster than K8L by decent margin.

Overall we are for another PIII vs. K7 battle with single very important change - AMD has a platform it had not back in the K7 vs. PIII days. Reply

I find the K8L a somewhat odd strategy. I guess they are targeting the Itanium market because Opterons already have a good part of the HPC market. Given that the HPC people are the ones that really care about FPU performance and that they are still a fairly small market segment, it seems an odd target. Integer performance rules the roost for servers... web, database, and just about everything else you can think of other than number crunching simulations and the like. Desktop uses for FPU are a few like games and some mathmatical stuff. Intel is focusing on integer performance at least as much as FPU with Conroe (Conroe gets a good dose of both), which makes sense to me since so much of the work done on computers, both desktops and servers, is dominated by integer operations. K8L speculation says only FPU horsepower will be added... just doesn't seem like a sound decision to me. Reply

I dont believe we will. Even S1 will be dual-channel, and this is what would have benefited the most from being single-channel (since the pincount would be much lower the package could be much smaller). Reply

Looking at the intensive timing and bus speed tweaks USING the SAME RAM as the latest XE955 article I would have expected the same kind of thing here. Anand doesn't look at lower speed lower latency for whatever chip he used. That RAM will do 3-2-2 at 667. Obviously AMD is more sensitive to latency. Reply

AMD is sensitive to latencies, cause of the memory controller. I'm sure that 3-2-2-9 DDR2 from OCZ, would give much more performance on AMD.

Again, this is only a CPU that they use to test, so it's not the true CPU. They wouldn't give us the performance it gives before it's launch. That's like killing yourself right now if the performance is poor....

I saw an article, that AMD could be working on DDR2 latencies. You think that 4-4-4-12 is good timings? 12 = tRAS

"tRAS is the time required before (or delay needed) between the active and precharge commands. In other words, how long the memory must wait before the next memory access can begin."

In fact, you have better frequencies, but lower timings.... What you need, is higher frequencies, and lower timings.

So we will have to wait till they launch Socket AM2, to know the true performance of AM2. Reply

4-4-4-12 are good timings, even for DDR2-667. It isn't easy to find reasonable priced DDR2-667 that works on those timing with standard voltage.

Some people forget that 99% of consumers won't be using super expensive overvolted 3-3-3-10 DDR2-800 memory just to get few percents of extra performance. And if you compare AMD CPU + super fast DDR2-800 against Intel CPU (which runs fine on DDR2-667 because of FSB limitation) then you need to take into account higher price of memory on AMD system. Reply

We are continuing to test the AM2 on different AM2 boards. On another motherboard we could run at 3-3-3 DDR2-800 with the OCZ PC2-8000 memory. Latency was a bit lower and bandwidth a bit higher, but nothing realy changed from Anand's conclusions. We have also been running DDR2-667 and DDR2-533 tests with this new super fast OCZ memory and cheaper mainstream DDR2 memory, and we will be sharing those results as soon as testing is complete.
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The crap the mobo companies have been shoving out the doors the past couple years is pure garbage as any number of hardware review sites have confirmed. It looks like the AM2 mobos might be more half-baked crap. Until you can test the shipping CPUs on a quality mobo that allows proper memory timing, it's difficult to know what AMD's AM2 CPUs will or won't deliver. If I had a dollar for every bogus claim Intel has made, I'd be a Billionaire so I wouldn't hold my breath that Conroe will perform as Intel claims. Reply

quote:Conroe WILL perform better than AM2 no matter how much spin people try to put on it.

How can you say this when there are exactly NO shipping Conroe parts? I THINK that Conroe will be competitive but even that opinion is speculation at best. YOU won't know shit about Conroe until it shows up at Newegg! Reply

If your logic applies, then he wont know anything about Conroe until he got it at home and working. So get over it, even the ES samples out in the wild kicks AMD so hard. The only question was if AM2 would bring extra performance to compete against Conroe, and it surely didn´t. Conroe prices also leaves AMD in the utter dust along with performance. 300$ Conroe E6600 chip or a 1200$ FX62? And the E6600 will be faster in most situations. You gotta be some extreme hardcore fanboi not to go Conroe. Reply

There's nothing to get over, asswipe. You nor he knows for sure how Conroe performs, period! You can fanboi me all you want. Facts are facts. When they ship and there are 3rd party benchmarks on 3rd party machines tested, then we'll all know for sure how they'll perform. Puff, puff, pass man, puff, puff pass. Reply

I wouldn't compare the pricing quite yet. AMD's AM2 pricing is for May 5th while Conroe's is for launch day... whenever that happens (and before you say June/July, Intel itself said that it would launch as close to the beginning of Q3 as possible but did not commit to an early Q3 launch).

Another thing, I have yet to see an E6600 being tested in "most situations", so until I see so, I'll say that your assumption that this is true is a bit irresponsible and fanboyish. Especially so if you consider that neither of the two CPUs (AM2 K8s and Conroes) can be bought quite yet, so convincing someone that one is a better deal is a bit premature. Personally, I think that AMD is going to get its ass handed to it by Conroe but I wouldn't go our of my way to swear it. Reply

Wow. Only twenty posts until someone put up something about Conroe performance. In case you haven't been reading AM2 news or even read the article, AM2 is supposed to launch in June and here we are in April with a preview that, for the most part, is pretty disappointing for anyone that had high hopes for a Conroe challenger. This is just like when Intel migrated to DDR2: it wasn't really necessary but it will give AMD experience for when they can really use it. However, I'm thinking it won't take AMD as long to see more noticeable performance gains with DDR2 than Intel. Regarding Conroe, any way you call it the chip is going to kick some serious @$$, especially if Intel doesn't have any problems ramping up the clock speed. Also, Conroe is still several months away, so unlike AMD, Intel still has some time to tweak the chip for even more performance for its scheduled launch time (won't say date because there is none yet), so who is to say that the current performance claims are bogus. Even if they are now, which I seriously doubt, there just might be enough time for Intel to live up to the hype anyway. Reply

I'm not sure,
but I think anandtech tested it at 533Mhz again, or
the processor is locked at 533Mhz.

Why did anandtech do the test only at 800Mhz?
Why didn’t test 533Mhz and 667Mhz DDR2 modules?

Because looking at those numbers:
-DDR2 533 will achive less bandwidth than DDR400?
-The latency of DDR2 is lower than DDR1?!?!
-Is the processor already full, so doesn’t need more bandwidth, and only at (theorical) 4GHz and beyond will use it? Reply

Not quite, DDR2-800 at 4-4-4 is the equivalent of DDR-400 at 4-4-4 because the memory cells run at 200MHz on both modules. Like I said above, though, module latency is not the only factor affecting the total latency, so perhaps DDR2 memory controllers help mitigate this huge latency hit. One of the main reasons why DRAM manufacturers love DDR2 is because their yields are much higher than they are on higher-clocked, aggresively-timed DDR1 due to the higher prefetch (lower operating clock) and the looser timings. Reply

The 400MHz clock is the clock the IO operates at, while the memory arrays operate at half the IO clock, so 200MHz in this case (so yes, DDR2 ram operates at a sort of quad data rate). Since a Column Access Strobe is a memory array operation it is, naturally, measured in memory array clocks. The "base clock" for DDR2 is actually 400MHz because it is the external clock. Reply

It is, the main factor affecting latency is the memory cell clock, which runs at the same clock on both modules. So you can do a straight comparison between the two latencies to see which will yield you a better MODULE latency. Of course, module latency is just one part of the whole latency equation, the memory controller being the other big part. Perhaps AMD made the controller more latency-friendly by sacrificing maximum bandwidth, which would explain the abnormally-low usable bandwidth. Reply

true, but you notice the latency that is in the review. seems that what i say holds true to an extent

btw, the timings are in signal clocks last i checked, not cell clocks, which runs at 1/2 the speed of the double data rate signal. kinda confusing, but oh well. point of the matter is that ddr400 at 2-3-2 is higher latency than ddr2-800 at 4-5-4 Reply

Don't forget capacity. If you loaded up 4 memory slots to bring 939 machines to 4gb, you harmed timings. DDR2 can bring 2gb on a module at good timings and thus make a higher performance 4gb machine. Why is this important? In Vista (yep I know it's delayed) you will find that gamers and power users of a wide variety will want 4gb machines, much the same as a good number of folks are starting to use 2gb machines now. The larger footprint of Vista ups the ante. It's not that 2gb won't be enough, it will do. Just as 1gb today "will do". But come the end of this year 4gb will start to be that cutting edge amount and that suits the use if DDR2 very well.

You already mentioned the power issue, with 1.8V for DDR2. That is something AMD needed in the mobile arena to stay competitive, so if they were already designing a top notch DDR2 controller, might as well do the entire cpu line. Since much of the market is actually starting to shift to mobile solutions, from a growth standpoint, being competitive here is going to be telling in each company's numbers. Since Merom is having heat issues (hence why Conroe is coming out so far ahead of Merom, meaning less of a heat budget constraint) you can expect that Turion X2's with DDR2 will put some pain on Yonah machines. I suspect that AMD knows their bandwidth is superb with DDR2 and are designing Turion X2's with 512 cache because it doesn't hurt them much. Watch this area in 2006, because the world won't be painted blue if AMD does well here. Intel is likely well aware and will push as hard as possible to bring Merom out to keep AMD from making ground. Mobile designs under S1 socket are coming aplenty.

well ofcourse we don't know the clock. But it is an important factor. @ 1.8GHz A64 didn't bennifit from dual channel. but it think @ 2.8GHz that story was totally different. So if you are testing @ 2.4GHz. there could be a larger gap @ 3GHz for example. Reply

Very true, but from what I've seen the picture doesn't change much from the 3800+ up to the FX-62, at least with current CPUs/platforms. The main thing that shows a performance difference is when going to even lower latency memory. You are right though, the hungrier the CPU gets (faster clock, wider core, etc...) the more it depends on a high bandwidth memory bus. However, I do believe that AMD's own model numbers tell the tale of what to expect.

I think that at the end of the day the 2 - 7% increase range is what will hold, with the vast majority of applications falling at the 2% end of the spectrum.

though one thing to keep in mind: memory efficiency is directly related to the cpu mhz. i've found that going from 2ghz to 3ghz while keeping the ram at 250mhz increases bandwidth by around 1800mb/s on my s939 rig :eek: Reply

I think there will be a lot of current users taking the upgrade path in my subject line, or something close to it. I may very well buy a new AMD chip in 2007, I'd sure like to be able to, but for the next 12 months I only see myself buying a used, overclock proven 2x1meg cache s939 X2 at the end of summer, and then trading up to Conroe during the holidays. I can't really see anyone but the strongest fanboys (and I'm pretty strong) buying AM2. Reply

Yeah it is disapointing that DDR2 800 doesnt increase performance by much for AMD. I think we will only see nice 20%+ improvements when AMD moves to 65nm CPUS, smaller transistors less power higher clock speed. Too bad 65 nm seems like Quarter 4 at earliest, next year most likely.

I do hope when Conroe is released AMD does big price cuts, cause their CPUS will no longer have performance crown so they no longer have excuse to have their X2 processors more expensive than Intel, so we should hopefully get X2 4400+ for $300, or X2 3800 for low $200s. Reply

they don't need to make price cuts yet... when conroe comes out i'm sure they will drop the prices by quite a bit. as it stands, the X2s are by far the best chip on the market and have been for quite some time, and have been reasonably static on price for half a year now. This is the first time in a long time that i remember chips staying THAT static at high prices.

That said... this review makes me worry for AMD. I hope they have something up their sleeve otherwise this generation will go very badly for them. Reply

I think a 20% clock speed increase is conceivable if a) AMD's 65nm shrink goes off well (let's assume a 10% increase due to this), and b) AMD's embedded germanium technique is 10% better than current DSL silicon. Of course, clocks woul not be 20% better until yields hit a decent point.

I think that the main way we'll see AMD get closer to a performance parity with Intel will be through the various architectural tweaks in Rev G, though there WILL be some clock speed increase out of manufacturing,. Reply

I think I will wait for the die shrink and just get a dual core and some ram for now. I've been trying to decide whether to wait or not to upgrade. I was thinking about waiting for the die shrink anyways. Reply

"better late than never" is the expression we all know, not "better early than never". wow, anandtech are really trying to sell this cpu in their "final words" section, even though it seems like a waste your money according to your performance tests. i think i'll stick w/ my s939 and just upgrade to a x2 cpu instead of a whole new socket.:/ Reply

nope it makes perfect sense. i wouldnt hold my breath for the am2 is what im saying. im sorry but a 5% increase doesnt justify ditching my s939 and opty 144. and what are u talking about limited life? w/ dualcores available on the s939 they're gonna be around well into 2008. It's 2006 and there are still tons of people using athlon xps and agp, so plz drop your enthusiast perspective on the market, it's not realistic of what the avg person has. Reply

quote:w/ dualcores available on the s939 they're gonna be around well into 2008.

no, it's EOL (end of life) is Q4'06, with socket 754 holding out one year more. By the time you decide to go X2, with AM2 out and all, prices are going to be higher than AM2 counterparts. AMD said it themselves that prices for s939 will be increased near and on AM2 launch. I think Brunnis covered most of it.

>> It's 2006 and there are still tons of people using athlon xps and agp, so plz drop your enthusiast perspective on the market, it's not realistic of what the avg person has.

>>>>Huh!? And what does this drivel has to do with whether AM2 or S939 is the best choice for a new computer build in the next few months?

what im saying w/ that "drivel", is that ppl are gonna have their s939 for a long time to come, the fact that lots of avg folks still use athlon xps and have agp, is proof of the previous gen staying around a whole lot longer than the manufacturers would care for. you call it "drivel", i call it proof. whatever, it's just another internet argument.

yes, if u're buying a new system, and u're an avg user, then a s939 will suit your needs fine for the next 2-3 years. If the AM2 is the same price as the s939 when it's released, then ofcourse the choice is obvious, aside from it being a new port and the s939 being a mature and stable port. about the EOL stuff, the Athlon xp has been EOL for a long time, but we can all find those chips easily for dirt cheap, EOL doesnt mean jack all if u know where to find them. thank u, and here's to another 2 years on my s939 rig.:) Reply

>> nope it makes perfect sense. i wouldnt hold my breath for the am2 is what im saying.

No, you made it seem like Anand recommended AM2 for people that already own reasonably fast S939 systems. The fact is that Anand did the exact opposite. What Anand said is that there's no point in buyin a S939 system for those who have older computers, which makes perfect sense. Don't you agree?

Yeah? And who told you that you should? It wasn't me and it certainly wasn't Anand. I was talking about people with older systems, as was Anand, yet you fail to comprehend what either of us wrote. Way to go.

>> and what are u talking about limited life? w/ dualcores available on the s939 they're gonna be around well into 2008.

So, if I were in the market for a new system you'd recommend me to buy a complete S939 system insted of AM2? AM2 will likely get 65nm K8L CPUs and possibly quad cores. I'm sure S939 is great and all, but it probably won't have much faster CPUs released for it and it's therefore pretty dead. Notice that I'm still not recommending S939 owners to switch on the launch of AM2, or that current 939 systems will be slow compared to the initial AM2 systems.

>> It's 2006 and there are still tons of people using athlon xps and agp, so plz drop your enthusiast perspective on the market, it's not realistic of what the avg person has.

Huh!? And what does this drivel has to do with whether AM2 or S939 is the best choice for a new computer build in the next few months? Reply

Yes, DDR2 533 and DDR2 667 benchmarks would have been useful, considering that these are the cheaper types of DDR2. Just because the max bandwidth for DDR2 533 is still higher than AMD's current bandwidth it doesn't mean that it'll achieve the same usable bandwidth unless AMD is currently being bottlenecked by a data link rather than by the mem controller's efficiency. Reply

Eh... With the arrival of DDR3 looming for 2007 it makes no sense to me to build a DDR2-based system now. DDR is still about the same price as DDR2, and where DDR2-800 gets a tiny performance edge over DDR-400, that edge completely disappears with DDR-500, or even a mild degree of overclocking.

Or at least, performance isn't sufficient motivation to switch, and price doesn't seem to be either. Perhaps power efficiency, since DDR2 is lower voltage. Reply

If we assume you are talking about an AMD system, then DDR3 won't be a possibility until maybe three years from now. They just moved out of the Socket 939, and into a new socket. Next socket you will see will be in more than a couple of years...
Yes, performance and price are not reason to switch now. Power efficiency for sure, if you will buy a low power processor (from 89W TDP to a 35W TDP, that is some 50W of power in best case, and possibly 25W in the worst case).
What other reason to switch could you have? Access to more memory (maybe), I don't know how much memory those new processors could access (more than 4GB? current mainboards seem limited to 3GB). Availability of high performance memory - fast DDR memory will dry up sooner than later. Processors will dry up too. Reply

Can you point to any DDR3 chipsets for CPUs on the horizon? Intel is sticking with DDR2 for now, and DDR3 is basically only being used in GPUs. It could be several years before we see DDR3 chipsets on motherboards - assuming we don't just skip that option altogether and go some other route. Reply

The bandwidth numbers are better now but STILL dissapointing. Intel will probably get about the same or better number from a 1333MHz FSB using DDR2 667. In the past, AMD always got a little better bandwidth out of the same speed modules. Are AMD sandbagging or do they have problems with their DDR2 controller? Reply

LOL, how do you define a "generation"? What kind of changes indicate that you're talking about a new generation? The K8 is remarkably similar to a K7, so is it a newer generation or just an improvement on the same one? Does it even matter?

The K8 has been on the market for close to three years now, so it's completely understandable that a brand new architecture will give it a run for its money. I'll say this, though, both the K8 and the Prescott came out at around the same time, so considering both the same generation is reasonable. Reply